1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to clothing and, particularly, to a garment sizing system that identifies the correct garment sizes for a given garment type from a plurality of brands.
2. Description of the Background
In 1983, the U.S. Department of Commerce quit using a uniform sizing system for women's clothing garments because the system no longer reflected the size and shape of the average consumer. Since that time, garment sizing has been left up to manufacturers that have continually redefined the previous sizing standards or instead have created their own standards. Thus, garment sizes now vary widely between designers or brands and even between garment lines of the same brand. Larger retailers establish sizing profiles and order to specification from the brand manufacturers. For example, NORDSTROM® offers a selection of clothing, shoes, cosmetics, and accessories for women, men and children, and they use ORACLE's Retail Size Profile Optimization software to improve assortment productivity and ensure better alignment of the right merchandise in the right sizes to meet customer demand by both category and store. This results in unique store size profiles for NORDSTROM's clothing merchandise. Other retailers have different sizing profiles. Consequently, a store size 1 in TARGET® stores may be a size 2 in OLD NAVY®, a size 3 in NORDSTROM®, and so on. Sizing within stores may run bigger or smaller, and some stores run even-numbered sizes (2, 4, 6, etc.) while others use odd-number sizing (1, 3, 5, etc.). And still other stores use Euro/UK sizing (25, 26, 27, etc.). This variation in sizing standards presents a substantial conundrum for the average consumer, which is amplified by online shopping when the consumer cannot try on the garment before purchasing. What is needed is a solution for correlating the “true size” or actual size of a desired garment from consumer-input size and/or garment information with reference to a database of store sizes, and for displaying the most appropriate store size of available garment brands and merchants stocking said brands to facilitate purchase of a desired garment in the consumer's right size.